money Letters: Will Indiana Supreme Court rule in favor of protecting women’s rights?
On Thursday, the Indiana Supreme Court will hear arguments about whether the state constitution broadly protects people’s right to abortion. In September 2022, our Indiana legislature hastily outlawed most abortions, even though most people in Indiana support leaving the abortion decision to the pregnant person. This followed the U.S. Supreme Court’s flawed decision to overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision and to return abortion regulation to individual states.
I am a retired physician who cared for pregnant women and their families for many years. It is wrong that since the overturn of Roe, women seeking abortions or even just basic information about abortion have had unnecessary greater costs, longer travel and greater risks. Women experiencing miscarriages have also suffered from the turmoil caused by the anti-abortion restrictions because the same medicines and procedures are used to manage both miscarriage and abortions.
Banning abortion does not make people or the state healthier. The 2022 Indiana Legislature pledged but did not pass more funding for public and maternal health and they are already hedging on this in 2023. Hopefully the Indiana Supreme Court will rule in favor of protecting women’s rights to high quality local abortion care.
Ellyn SteckerSouth Bend
Abortion bans
Abortion bans in Indiana do the most harm to people who most need our support as they work to build better lives for themselves and their families.
How do I know this?
I am a professor at a public university that serves many first-generation students. I hear from students regularly about the heart-wrenching choices they face when they are not able to access abortion care.Sometimes students are unable to leave an abusive relationship in which pregnancy is a tool for entrapment. Sometimes failed birth control leads to agony over care for existing children in a household with limited resources. Sometimes substandard health care is to blame for lack of prevention or an inability to support a healthy pregnancy. All these situations can keep a student from successfully pursuing higher education, which we know is a key to social mobility.
In sum, when Hoosiers are denied the ability to decide whether and when to become parents, they are not the only ones who suffer. Families and neighborhoods also suffer when people are not able to pursue the self-improvements — academic, professional, creative and economic — that uplift our communities and our state.
April Lidinsky
South Bend
Fresh start
The new year is here, and it’s a great time for fresh starts. If you’re a tobacco user, the best thing you can do this year is to make a quit plan. Smoking is still the number one cause of preventable death in Indiana. Making the decision to quit in 2023 can dramatically reduce your risk for life threatening diseases. It’s important to make a quit plan that will:
• Combine quit smoking strategies to keep you focused, confident, and motivated to quit
• Help identify challenges you will face as you quit and ways to overcome them
• Can improve your chances of quitting smoking for good
A trained quit coach can help with a quit plan including the following steps:
• Pick a quit date
• Let loved ones know you are quitting
• Identify your reasons to quit smoking
• Identify your smoking triggers
• Develop coping strategies
• Remove reminders of smoking
• Set up rewards for quit milestones
Free, confidential help is available at 1-800-Quit-Now or QuitNowIndiana.com. Call today to see if you qualify for free patches or gum. Make 2023 your best year yet by making the decision to quit.
Jennifer Olson
Executive director, United Health Services
This article originally appeared on South Bend Tribune: Indiana Supreme Court set to hear arguments on state's abortiom ban.
